‘Was the daughter alone in the house with her?’
‘She is as a rule – she was last night.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
Sharp pulled rather an odd kind of face.
‘Your Miss Silver arrived about half an hour ago, and Nicholas Carey walked in about ten minutes before you did. He banged past young Hammet who opened the door for him, and was in the drawing-room before anyone could stop him. I came up with him just in time to see the girl fling herself into his arms, and to hear her say, “Oh, Nicky, tell them you didn’t do it!”’
Frank Abbott whistled.
‘Well, that’s straight to the point at any rate. I suppose you didn’t leave them to put their heads together?’
‘What do you take me for? He’s in the dining-room – you had better come in and see him. Perhaps you had better look at Miss Graham’s statement first.’
Nicholas Carey was walking up and down with a good deal of vigour and impatience. He wanted to get on with making a statement, and he wanted to get back to Althea. She was looking all in, and what she wanted was a shoulder to cry on. What he wanted was to know what had been happening, and how it could possibly have happened. He stopped his pacing when the two police officers came in, and said abruptly:
‘What’s been going on here?’
Frank Abbott’s colourless eyebrows rose. He had the type of looks which lends itself without effort to an appearance of being supercilious. A long nose, a long pale face, fair hair slicked back into mirror smoothness, eyes of the palest shade of a bluish grey, a tall light figure, a certain elegance of dress, a certain fastidiousness as to detail, added up to something as unlike the popular idea of a police inspector as possible. He might have been any young man in any rather exclusive club. The light eyes focused themselves upon Nicholas in a daunting manner as he said,
‘Don’t you know?’
Nicholas had stopped pacing. He stood between the dining-table and the window, his face pale and frowning.
‘I heard that Mrs Graham was dead. I came to find out if it was true. Miss Graham and I are engaged. I asked you what has been happening. I’m still asking.’
Frank said without any expression at all,
‘Mrs Graham was murdered last night.’
Nicholas exclaimed, ‘Murdered!’
‘Some hours ago.’ He turned to Inspector Sharp. ‘Did the police surgeon hazard any guess as to the time?’
‘Somewhere round about midnight.’
Frank Abbott resumed.
‘Perhaps you can help us. What time was it when you left?’ Then, as everything in Nicholas tautened, ‘Oh, we know you were here – Miss Graham has been quite frank about that. By the way my name is Abbott – Detective Inspector Abbott from Scotland Yard. I have only just arrived, and I haven’t seen Miss Graham myself. I shall be interested to have your account of what happened. You had an appointment with her. How was it made?’
‘I telephoned. I said I would come round and see her at half past ten.’
‘Mrs Graham went to bed early?’
‘Yes – about nine.’
‘She did not welcome your visits?’
‘You might put it that way.’
‘Which is why you arranged to meet Miss Graham in the summerhouse at the top of the garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you kept this appointment?’
‘I did.’
Frank Abbott said,
‘Well, Mr Carey, are you going to tell us what happened after that? You are not obliged to do so of course. On the other hand, if you haven’t got anything to hide…’
‘I certainly haven’t got anything to hide.’
‘Then I think we might just as well sit down.’ He turned one of the chairs which stood in to the dining-table and sat down on it. Inspector Sharp followed his example.
Nicholas Carey jerked back the chair for himself. It went through his mind that it must be all of six years since he had broken bread in this house. Yet it was Allie’s house and always had been – an added irony! He took his seat and waited for one of the policemen to begin. It was the Scotland Yard man who led off.
‘Well, you got here at half past ten. Did you come into the house?’
‘No, I waited in the gazebo.’
The word rang a bell in Frank Abbott’s mind. His grandmother, the formidable Lady Evelyn Abbott, had possessed a gazebo in the old-fashioned garden at Deeping. It had been Abbott property for three hundred years, and it belonged now to his uncle, Colonel Abbott. The gazebo looked down a yew walk which Monica Abbott kept planted with lilies in their season. But Lady Evelyn’s money had gone past them to their daughter Cicely, the only one of her relations with whom she had not managed to quarrel. [see Eternity Ring]
All of which was ancient history and did not weigh on Frank at all. Only the gazebo came into his mind in a familiar manner and remained there.
Nicholas Carey went on with his statement.
‘Miss Graham met me as we had arranged, and we were discussing plans when Mrs Graham interrupted us.’
Frank Abbott said, ‘There was a scene?’
Nicholas looked darkly in front of him.
‘She made one. Miss Graham told her she would make herself ill, and I said I would come round and see her in the morning.’
‘Why?’
‘We were discussing arrangements about our marriage. Mrs Graham had put a stop to it five years ago, and she wanted to put a stop to it now.’
Curiously enough, at that moment Frank Abbott and Nicholas Carey entertained the same thought – on Frank’s side ‘He was a fool to say that’; on Nicholas’ side, ‘I suppose that was a stupid thing to say.’ He followed it up by going on aloud.
‘She wouldn’t listen, so Miss Graham told me I had better go away, and she took her mother back to the house.’
Frank’s cool gaze narrowed a little.
‘And then?’
‘I went.’
‘Straight back to – by the way, where are you living?’
‘I’m staying at Grove Hill House with Mr and Mrs Harrison.’
‘And you went back to Grove Hill House?’
‘No – I went for a walk.’
‘When did you return?’
‘I don’t know – pretty late. I was disturbed and I wanted to walk it off. I didn’t notice the time.’
‘I see. And this morning you heard that Mrs Graham was dead. Who told you?’
‘I went out directly after breakfast. We had planned to be married today. Miss Graham wanted a church wedding, and I had to see the parson – I thought I’d catch him before he got going. He used to be rather a friend of mine. I didn’t want to use the telephone. Well, he had had a call to someone who was ill, so I went back to Grove Hill House. Mrs Harrison said her daily maid had just come in to say Mrs Graham had died in the night.’
‘And who had told the daily maid?’
‘She said the milkman told her. I came round straight away.’
The questioning went on. In the end Nicholas Carey had said nothing that did not agree with the statement already made by Althea Graham. When he had signed his own statement they let him go.
As he walked into the drawing-room, Miss Silver emerged from it. She was still in her outdoor things – the black cloth coat with many years service behind it and the prospect of more to come, the black felt hat which was not her best but had been done up for the autumn with some of those ruchings of black and purple ribbon so unbecoming to elderly ladies but so constantly pressed upon them by the hat trade. The weather being mild, she was not wearing the archaic fur tippet, so warm, so cosy, which could be called upon to supplement the coat on colder days, but having regard to the changeable nature of the English climate, it reposed in the suit-case which had not yet been unpacked. She greeted Frank Abbott with the formality which she was always so careful to observe before strangers. In private she might, and did, address him as Frank and permit him the affectionate and familiar behaviour which she would have accorded to a relation, but in public there would be no lapse from the conventions. She said,